ex515fandomcom-20200213-history
Guttural
Guttural speech sounds are those with a primary place of articulation near the back of the oral cavity. In some definitions, this is restricted to pharyngeal consonants, but in others includes some velar and uvular consonants. Guttural sounds are typically consonants, but some vowels' articulations may also be considered guttural in nature. Although the term has historically been used by phoneticians, and is occasionally used by phonologists today, it is now more common in popular use as an imprecise term for sounds produced relatively far back in the vocal tract. The term continues to be used by some phonologists to denote laryngeal consonants (including uvulars), as well as murmured, pharyngealized, glottalized, and strident vowels. Meaning and etymology The word guttural literally means 'of the throat' (from Latin guttur, meaning throat), and was first used by phoneticians to describe the Hebrew glottal (א) and (ה), uvular (ח), and pharyngeal (ע).See Oxford English Dictionary entry The term is now commonly extended to include also velar consonants, which deviates from the strict etymology. As used in linguistics, such a definition includes all velar consonants, regardless of manner of articulation. The term is also commonly used non-technically by English speakers to refer to sounds that subjectively appear harsh or grating. This definition usually includes a number of consonants that are not used in English, such as epiglottal and , uvular and , and velar fricatives and . However, it usually excludes sounds used in English, such as the velar stops and , the velar nasal , and the glottal consonants and .McCarthy, John J. 1989. 'Guttural Phonology', ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst.McCarthy, John J. Forthcoming. 'Guttural Transparency', ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Guttural languages In popular consciousness, languages that make extensive use of guttural consonants are considered to be guttural languages. A guttural language tends to make a sound rather "heavy" and/or "throaty". To English-speakers, guttural languages would sound strange and may be even hard on the ear of those who are used to the English pronunciation.Hayward, K. M. and Hayward, R. J. 1989. '"Guttural": Arguments for a New Distinctive Feature', Transactions of the Philological Society 87: 179-193. Examples of significant usage Some of the languages that extensively use x, χ, ɣ and/or q are: *Afrikaans *Armenian *Assyrian Neo-AramaicBeyer, Klaus (1986). The Aramaic language: its distribution and subdivisions. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht. .Brock, Sebastian (2006). An Introduction to Syriac Studies. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press. . *AzerbaijaniShiraliyev, Mammadagha. The Baku Dialect. Azerbaijan SSR Academy of Sciences Publ.: Baku, 1957; p. 41 *Crimean Tatar *DutchFriedrich Maurer uses the term Istvaeonic instead of Franconian; see Friedrich Maurer (1942), Nordgermanen und Alemannen: Studien zur germanischen und frühdeutschen Sprachgeschichte, Stammes- und Volkskunde, Bern: Verlag Francke. *PersianLazard, Gilbert, "Pahlavi, Pârsi, dari: Les langues d'Iran d'apès Ibn al-Muqaffa" in R.N. Frye, Iran and Islam. In Memory of the late Vladimir Minorsky, Edinburgh University Press, 1971. *GermanFor a history of the German consonants see Fausto Cercignani, The Consonants of German: Synchrony and Diachrony, Milano, Cisalpino, 1979. *Irish *Manx *Kartvelian languages (i.e. Georgian, Mingrelian, Laz, Svan)Boeder (2002), p. 3Boeder (2005), p. 6Gamkrelidze (1966), p. 69Fähnrich & Sardzhveladze (2000) *Pashto *Scottish GaelicBauer, Michael Blas na Gàidhlig - The Practical Guide to Gaelic Pronunciation (2011) Akerbeltz *Spanish *Tajik PersianA Beginners' Guide to Tajiki by Azim Baizoyev and John Hayward, Routledge, London and New York, 2003, p. 3 *Tswana *Welsh In addition to their usage of q, x, χ and ɣ, these languages also have the pharyngeal consonants of ʕ and ħ: *Berber languages (i.e. Kabyle, Tamasheq) *Cushitic languages (i.e. Somali)Richard Hayward, "Afroasiatic", in Heine & Nurse, 2000, African Languages *Kurdish, only partially in words borrowed from Semitic languages (the only pharyngeal Indo-Iranian language) *Northeast Caucasian languages (i.e. Chechen, Lezgian, Avar) *Northwest Caucasian (i.e. Abkhaz, Adyghe, Kabardian).Nichols, J. 1997 Nikolaev and Starostin's North Caucasian Etymological Dictionary and the Methodology of Long-Range Comparison: an assessment Paper presented at the 10th Biennial Non-Slavic Languages (NSL) Conference, Chicago, 8–10 May 1997.Row 7 in *Salishan and Wakashan language families in British Columbia *Semitic languages (i.e. Arabic, Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, Turoyo, Hebrew) . Examples of partial usage In French, the only truly guttural sound is (usually) a uvular fricative (or the guttural R). In Portuguese, is becoming dominant in urban areas. There is also a realization as a , and the original pronunciation as an also remains very common in various dialects. In Russian, is assimilated to the palatalization of the following velar consonant: лёгких . It also has a voiced allophone , which occurs before voiced obstruents. In Romanian, becomes the velar in word-final positions (duh 'spirit') and before consonants (hrean 'horseradish'). In Czech, the phoneme followed by a voiced obstruent can be realized as either or , e.g. aby'ch''' byl'' .Kučera, H. (1961). The Phonology of Czech. s’ Gravenhage: Mouton & Co. In Kyrgyz, the consonant phoneme has a uvular realisation ( ) in back vowel contexts. In front-vowel environments, is fricativised between continuants to , and in back vowel environments both and fricativise to and respectively.Кызласов И. Л., Рунические письменности евразийских степей (Kyzlasov I.L. Runic scripts of Eurasian steppes), Восточная литература (Eastern Literature), Moscow, 1994, pp. 80 on, , with further bibliography. In Uyghur, the phoneme occurs with a back vowel. In the Mongolian language, is usually followed by . The Tuu and Juu (Khoisan) languages of southern Africa have large numbers of guttural vowels. These sounds share certain phonological behaviors that warrant the use of a term specifically for them. There are scattered reports of pharyngeals elsewhere, such as in the Nilo-Saharan, Tama language. In Swabian German, a pharyngeal approximant is an allophone of in nucleus and coda positions. In onsets, it is pronounced as a uvular approximant. In Danish, may have slight frication, and, according to , it may be a pharyngeal approximant . In Finnish, a weak pharyngeal fricative is the realization of after the vowels or in syllable-coda position, e.g. 'star'. References